So I have this weird electrical problem where the headlight and indicator lights are flickering. Not very noticeable by day, but pretty annoying by night. While driving home last night, I realized that the flickering would stop whenever i braked, and that the lights would be constant and smooth.
Mind you, when I say braking, I'm pulling the lever just enough to activate the rear brake light, so I'm sure this is an electrical problem. I don't know what to repair for this flickering to just stop completely, so I wanted to know if anyone knows what is wrong with the electrical system and what to do?
I also have heated grips, and it seems like the indicator lights actually get brighter when giving the heated grips full current, seems to me it should be the other way around? Also whenever i use the indicators, all the other lights dim a little whenever the indicator bulbs are on, but i think this is pretty normal maybe.
thanks in advance
You might be lucky and find a loose battery connection, a poor ground or dirty connection somewhere but my money is on the reg/rect.
The flickering lights and the fact it disappears when current demand goes up is the giveaway.
I have done the test described here in John Bate's test before, unsuccessfully trying to trouble shoot http://bbburma.net/Documents/JohnBates_ChargingCircuitTests3.pdf (http://bbburma.net/Documents/JohnBates_ChargingCircuitTests3.pdf) and the rectifier passed all of the measurements, though I have not checked it while running, as I thought it would be okay as it passed all the tests.
Can I just disconnect the coils from the R/R and isolate it that way, and safely assume it's faulty if the flickering stops? This would run it just from the battery I'm assuming
Also the battery is not more than a few months old, and I have gone over most of the connections and cleaned them, but I guess there can always be a single spot that is bad. Also I have read that a MOSFET type R/R is better, but I'm not sure which are compatible with the GS. Looking through ebay, seems like there's a lot of fake ones around too.
Thank you for your help man, means a lot
Get the battery load tested, the fact it is new means nothing. If it comes back good put a voltmeter.......an accurate one! across the battery, anything significantly higher than about 15v indicates there is a problem.
Don't rely on static tests. How a reg/rect performs with 6VDC from your multimeter passing through it may well be different to how it performs on the bike when it sees around 90VAC from the alternator.